When he was in this plight, Ino
daughter of Cadmus, also called Leukothea, saw him. She had formerly
been a mere mortal, but had been since raised to the rank of a marine
goddess. Seeing in what great distress Odysseus now was, she had
compassion upon him, and, rising like a sea-gull from the waves, took
her seat upon the raft.
"My poor good man," said she,
"why is Poseidon so furiously angry with you? He is giving you a
great deal of trouble, but for all his bluster he will not kill you.
You seem to be a sensible person, do then as I bid you; strip, leave
your raft to drive before the wind, and swim to the Phaeacian coast
where better luck awaits you. And here, take my veil and put it round
your chest; it is enchanted, and you can come to no harm so long as
you wear it. As soon as you touch land take it off, throw it back as
far as you can into the sea, and then go away again." With these
words she took off her veil and gave it him. Then she dived down
again like a sea-gull and vanished beneath the seething dark
waters.
But Odysseus did not know what to
think. "Alas," he said to himself in his dismay, "this is only some
one or other of the gods who is luring me to ruin by advising me to
will quit my raft. At any rate I will not do so at present, for the
land where she said I should be quit of all troubles seemed to be
still a good way off. I know what I will do - I am sure it will be
best - no matter what happens I will stick to the raft as long as her
timbers hold together, but when the sea breaks her up I will swim for
it; I do not see how I can do any better than this."
While he was thus in two minds,
Poseidon sent a terrible great wave that seemed to rear itself above
his head till it broke right over the raft, which then went to pieces
as though it were a heap of dry chaff tossed about by a whirlwind.
Odysseus got astride of one plank and rode upon it as if he were on
horseback; he then took off the clothes Calypso had given him, bound
Ino's veil under his arms, and plunged into the sea - meaning to
swim on shore. King Poseidon watched him as he did so, and wagged his
head, muttering to himself and saying, "‘There now, swim up and
down as you best can till you fall in with well-to-do people. I do
not think you will be able to say that I have let you off too
lightly." On this he lashed his horses and drove to Aigai where his
palace is.
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.